with David Blaska

Here’s your nuance, you ‘despicable right-wing crazies’

(page 1 of 2)

The next president of the United States will take the oath of office with less than half the support of the nation’s deeply divided voters. Bernie Sanders will run as an independent to the political left of Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump will do the same to the right of the Republican party’s nominee. I hope that nominee is Paul Ryan.

American politics is a free for all. Our politics are suddenly Italian. We’re missing only pistols at 10 paces.

Although others rebuked Trump for his proposed ban on all Muslims, only Paul Ryan has the national stature to command the attention of the nation’s mass news media. The party will turn to Ryan as it did when it asked him to take over the fractious Congress.

The over-crowded herd of presidential candidates have canceled each other out. Only Ryan has the unique combination of policy chops, government experience, and conservative pro-life cred. He’s young (45), climbs a tree stand, sleeps in his office, and goes back home for family weekends. Paul Ryan is grounded in the middle class — a member of the 90%, unlike Hillary or The Donald.

No one can better articulate “the vision thing.” Ryan is the best communicator since the Gipper himself. He is untainted by the sleaze of the never-ending Clinton soap opera.

Give Trump credit, however, for dramatizing the contradictions. Trump is the (too) plain-talking un-P.C. antipode to The Current Occupant’s constant hectoring and sermonizing. With none of his equivocating “nuance,” Trump has stripped The Emperor bare. Unfortunately, The Donald substitutes Obama’s inanities with his own craziness. But it is craziness that generates big polling numbers — numbers that make Ted Cruz mainstream.

War on guns but not terrorism

Because our liberal-progressive-socialist acquaintances are headed off their own cliff in the other direction. After 50 years of Big Gummint entitlement programs, they’ve now discovered that those programs failed only because they’re not big enough. Sandra Fluke wants someone to pay for her birth control. Bernie promises free college. The Atlantic magazine makes the case for billions of dollars in racial reparations. Police are the enemy. Guns must be confiscated from good people because criminals and terrorists won’t give up theirs. If the president attends an international summit meeting it’s about “global climate change” not terrorism, which has been “contained.”

Denmark, not Plymouth Rock, is their model.

All the while, Progressives openly mock their inferiors for clinging to their guns and Bibles and for (supposedly) voting against their own economic interests. They’re certain the unwashed mob is one sheet short of a Klan cross burning.

Terrorism, as he sees it, is to be feared less for the harm it causes than for the over-reaction it risks eliciting. [The president suggests] that Americans are always on the verge of returning to the wickedness whence we came.” — “Fighting terror by self-reproach.”

Stephens sums up the first 48 hours of the investigation into the San Bernardino slaughter as “a nationwide flight from the obvious, an heroic exercise in cultural sensitivity … as every motive except for jihad was mooted.” Our liberal- etc. acquaintances “Pretend … that the extreme branch of Islam to which Farook plainly belonged is a protected religion rather than a dangerous ideology. By supposing that it is somehow immoral to harbor graver reservations about 10,000 refugees from Syria or Iraq than, say, New Zealand.”

On the same page, William McGurn puts it right between the eyes: “Today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. … So they demonize guns while fighting approaches that try to identify threats.” — “The liberal theology of gun control.”

Guns are a foreign substance to mystified Madison Democrats. Last month State Reps. Lisa Subeck, Terese Berceau, Melissa Sargent, and Chris Taylor proposed legislation to ban “semi-automatic assault weapons.” Except their bill (LRB 3635, explained here) would have banned almost all pistols and some of the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns. Retroactively! The bill was quickly withdrawn.

In your rant about "Big Gummint" it sure is convenient that you forgot to mention that R's were the occupant for 28 of the last 50 years. Pretty telling both about your poor research skills, and the Big Gummint R's.

And your statement about "would have banned almost all pistols and some of the most popular hunting rifles and shotgun" is just a lacking in fact as it was on Murphy's blog.

Dec 9, 2015 07:26 pm

Posted by
Anonymous

ANonymous @ 5:04 My unmodified Remington 870 Express shotgun, used for bird and deer hunting and probably one of if not the most common entry level shotguns on the market, has "a 2nd handgrip" and thus would be classified as illegal under the proposed ban. The forestock is this 2nd handgrip ( one doesnt shoot this gun one handed, or hold the barrel or double fist the stock to shoot), and is on every pump action shotgun on the market. Nothing lackng in fact here, only your unsupported and ignorant statement.

Dec 10, 2015 08:34 am

Posted by
Anonymous

anon 7:26

Sorry, but you have been drinking the NRA cool aid. Nothing in the proposal would prohibit a 870 or other pump shotgun. I have several as do my kids and we aren't worried one iota. What does worry us is blathering blaska spreading lies.

Dec 10, 2015 09:01 am

Posted by
madisonexpat

To the larger issue.We need a Reagan to follow this Carter.Anyone with a vision and a simple, doable plan.Reagan had three goals;Grow the stalled out economy.Defeat the Soviet Empire.Make our military first class.

Every policy, every decision was checked against these goals.He moved us forward and produced more freedom, wealth and opportunity than anyone since Eisenhower.

So let it be again.America as the "Shining City On the Hill".

Dec 10, 2015 09:53 am

Posted by
Anonymous

David, do you really think Ryan has a chance against the Pantsuit? It's a foregone conclusion that the people that voted for a two-term Obama presidency will elect her for the third and forth terms. Bernie will not run as an independent and the Republicans will implode with the Trumpster. When Hillary gets a Democratic majority in Congress, progressive policies started under Obama will accelerate. And when she appoints two more Supreme Court justices, guns will be rounded up and melted. Thankfully, we will become a lot more like Denmark and Sweden and the restive Third World will be disinclined to attack us as we will trim down our military/industrial complex. Keep whining but it ain't going to help you or your 19th Century causes.

Dec 10, 2015 11:00 am

Posted by
David Blaska

"Thankfully, we will become a lot more like Denmark and Sweden and the restive Third World will be disinclined to attack us."

Utterly pathetic.

"On 14–15 February 2015, shootings occurred in Copenhagen, Denmark. Two victims and the suspected perpetrator were killed, while five police officers were wounded.

"The first shooting took place on 14 February at a public afternoon event called "Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression" at the Krudttønden cultural centre, where a gunman killed one civilian and wounded three police officers. Swedish artist Lars Vilks was among the speakers and is thought to have been the main target because of his drawings of Muhammad. The second shooting took place later that night (after midnight, and, therefore, on the 15th), outside the city's Great Synagogue in Krystalgade. A gunman killed a Jewish man on security duty during a bat mitzvah celebration, and wounded two police officers. Later that morning near Nørrebro station, police tracking the suspects shot and killed a man, after he opened fire on them while he attempted to enter a location under police surveillance. The man was identified as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, whom police said was responsible for both attacks."

If you want the Netherlands, we can go there, too.

And thanks for confirming that Hillary intends to confiscate guns from law-abiding American citizens.

Dec 10, 2015 11:18 am

Posted by
Anonymous

Blaska plays the moral equivalency game, comparing Trump's rantings to PRESIDENT Barack Obama's discourse. And we're expected to take this line of thought seriously? I only want to know whether Blaska tacked up his Tiger Beat poster of Paul Ryan above or below the Sarah Palin portrait on his bedroom ceiling.

Dec 10, 2015 11:20 am

Posted by
Anonymous

Illegals like the Syrians? What contempt for facts and history! Refugees are not "illegals"! Are the Hmong families who settled in this part of the country doing so illegally?

Please pepper your demagoguery with a little accuracy for the benefit of the Republic.

Dec 10, 2015 11:26 am

Posted by
Anonymous

Keep dreaming about Ryan, but your fellow conservatives are starting to rally around Ted Cruz. Read that again: Ted Cruz. His car club buddies call him the Cruzer.

Dec 10, 2015 11:35 am

Posted by
Anonymous

Gun control is only one of the prime tenets of liberal theology. Don't forget the (equally barmy) others: climate change, unregulated immigration, the war on law enforcement, special privileges for any and all aggrieved minorities, etc., etc. President Ryan (nice ring to that!) will need two full terms to clear the wreckage of Obama's reign.

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About This Blog

Raised on a farm near Sun Prairie, David Blaska is a recovering liberal who spent 18 years in daily newspapers, including 12 at The Capital Times in Madison as a reporter and editor. He served Gov. Tommy Thompson as acting press secretary in 1998 and is a veteran and survivor of 19 years in state government. He served 12 years on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. From December 2007 to November 2011 he wrote the consistently popular "Blaska's Blog" for Isthmus online's "The Daily Page" until, he says, the intolerant liberals ran him off. He blogs from Madison.